Joe Manchin says he is 'absolutely' considering a 2024 presidential campaign

Outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) is teasing a possible bid for the presidency, just on the heels of announcing his retirement from the US Senate last week.

In a recent interview with NBC News' Kristin Welker, Sen. Manchin suggested a presidential run wasn't out of the question, saying that while he is still mulling whether there's room for moderate candidates in the field, he considered a possible bid for the White House to be a patriotic duty.

"I will do anything I can to help my country, and you're saying, 'Does that mean you would consider it?' Absolutely," Manchin said.

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"Every American should consider it if they're in a position to help save the country," he continued. "I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure, to mobilize that moderate sensible, common-sense middle."

From a policy standpoint, Manchin is far more conservative than the rest of his Democratic colleagues. When President Biden was championing his "Build Back Better Act" that would have made trillions of dollars in investments in public infrastructure, education and social programs, Manchin famously watered it down from $4 trillion to $1.75 trillion until he eventually rendered it dead. And with author Marianne Williamson, professor Dr. Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein running to Biden's left, and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota) staking out more conservative positions than Biden — particularly on immigration — the New York Times has argued that Biden is in fact the centrist candidate.

Manchin — a Democratic senator from a state Donald Trump won handily in both 2016 and 2020 – didn't elaborate on whether he would run in the Democratic primary or as an independent, but he reiterated that the overall goal of any potential presidential campaign would be to deny Donald Trump a second term in the White House.

"I'm totally, absolutely scared to death that Donald Trump would become president again," Manchin said. "I think we will lose democracy as we know it."

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In the recent past, Sen. Manchin has toyed with the idea of running a presidential campaign in conjunction with the group No Labels, which floated the idea of running a moderate candidate in a handful of swing states. The New Republic theorized that this could lead to no candidate winning a majority of electoral college votes. This would result in the House of Representatives deciding the presidential election, with each state's delegation getting one vote apiece. Because Republicans control slightly more state delegations than Democrats, it's likely that such a scenario could lead to Donald Trump getting elected president with the help of a GOP-controlled House.